Recent studies show that 30% of adults suffer from intermittent sleep disorders, and 10% of the disorder becomes chronic. Even children are susceptible to this misfortune: from 10 to 20% of schoolchildren cannot sleep for a long time, and the reason for this is anxiety and fears. The number of people using sleeping pills is growing steadily - which is not surprising at the current pace of life.
Morpheus and his "descendants"
However, the problem did not arise yesterday. Even in ancient times, people tried to fight insomnia in a variety of ways. For example, they made sacrifices to the gods. The Greeks had the god of sleep, Hypnos (from whose name the word "hypnosis" came from), the Romans - Morpheus, who gave the name to the dangerous drug. By the way, at one time insomnia and other diseases were quite successfully treated with morphine, until they noticed that the patients who had started to sleep were no longer asking for morphine, but demanding, and much more than the doctor ordered. Then chloral hydrate was invented, which also had a beneficial effect on the nervous system. It is to this drug that many well-known "sleepers" owe their premature death.
Jack London worked, as they say, until you drop, whipping himself up with alcohol, so sleep problems were not long in coming. As a result, he was found at the death of 40 years old, and it was not possible to save him. Near the bed, on which the famous writer unsuccessfully tried to fall asleep, they found a piece of paper with his calculations: how much chloral hydrate and morphine should be taken to fall asleep. And if it doesn't help, then to die. Researchers have not yet come to a definite conclusion regarding the cause of his death.
The price of impressionability
“After a sleepless night, hands are weakening,” wrote Marina Tsvetaeva, who had suffered from sleep disorders all her life, which were caused by the peculiarities of the “poetic” nervous system, heavy smoking and excessive consumption of black coffee. Korney Chukovsky spoke not so romantically about insomnia: “What is terrible about insomnia is that you stay in your own society longer than you need it… observation becomes more acute: am I sleeping or not sleeping? Will I fall asleep or not sleep? " As a result, Chukovsky, exhausted by insomnia, according to Kaverin, “wrote 2 times a week, the rest was eaten by insomnia”. Once he wanted to sleep so much and for so long could not plunge into a saving nap that he began to beat himself on the head with his fists. Driven to despair, Chukovsky turned to doctors for help, who prescribed sleeping pills that were newfangled at that time. As a result, addiction to pills was added to sleep disorders. “The barbiturates are to blame for the fact that we are degenerates,” the poet joked bitterly. Indeed, many images and plot collisions from "Cockroach", "Moidodyr", "Fedorin grief" are very reminiscent of a talented, but nonsense, in the spirit of Salvador Dali.
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Almost all creative people with hypersensitivity, impressionability, susceptibility, that is, an excitable type of the nervous system, were victims of insomnia. Yesenin, according to researchers, was driven to suicide not only by alcoholism, but also by his faithful companion - insomnia. It is no accident that on the fateful night in Angleterre, he knocked on the doors of his acquaintances' rooms, asking to be admitted. The poet also had the unpleasant habit of calling his friends late at night, wondering with mock surprise: “Really? Is it already three in the morning? I didn't know!"
Distress signals
This behavior, by the way, is typical of many people who suffer from sleep disorders. A kind of aggression - I, they say, do not sleep, and you do not sleep! It is no coincidence that psychiatrists and psychologists call insomnia a "cry for help" in depressed patients: they do not sleep on their own and interfere with others' sleep, like babies who scream and cry all night long, indicating pain and trouble.
A person's lack of sleep is not just psychologically suffering. Sleep deprivation has been used as a form of torture since ancient times. After a certain time, people, deprived of the opportunity to sleep, became irritable and awkward, memory and coordination of movements were disturbed, then hallucinations began, and then death could occur.
Sometimes a person wants to sleep so much that he is capable of terrible acts, both in relation to himself (suicide) and in relation to others. Chekhov has a story "I Want to Sleep", in which a girl, exhausted by a lack of sleep and unbearable work around the clock, strangles the owner's screaming baby, whom she was forced to look after. And after this monstrous crime he falls asleep sweetly …
For psychiatrists, the most unfavorable type of depression is agitated, that is, active depression. If the patient is lethargic, apathetic, sleeps all day, the likelihood of suicide is not so great compared to the situation when the patient runs from corner to corner, constantly talks, wringing his hands and cannot sleep. By the way, many mental illnesses begin with sleep disorders, of which insomnia ranks first. The great Bismarck fell into depression after a series of defeats and failures. He stopped sleeping, started drinking alcohol and overeating. Soon he lost his human form, became terribly fat and flabby. Fortunately, a wonderful doctor took care of the health of the chancellor, who first of all adjusted the patient's sleep, and then healed him. Often sleep problems are associated with excess weight: it is during sleep that important substances are produced,which are responsible for the feeling of fullness. Even if you just do not get enough sleep, during the day you will experience hunger more often than usual - notes Dr. Stephen Juan. During sleep, our immune system is also restored, so sleep treatment is used for many serious diseases.
Insomnia can kill a person, and medications to combat it are sometimes no less dangerous. Elvis Presley absorbed sleeping pills in huge quantities, and Marilyn Monroe gave herself enemas with chloral hydrate - the usual remedies no longer worked on her. As a result, insomnia can be considered the cause of her death, which brought a huge number of the great and famous to the grave.
In the West, researchers describe the “bed hate syndrome” - when people see a Procrustean bed on which so many excruciating sleepless hours have been spent, people experience negative feelings that further provoke sleep problems. As a result, a person begins to be afraid to go to bed, tries to fall asleep while sitting in a chair or on a sofa. Elvis Presley, by the way, was not found dead in bed, but in a luxurious dressing room, where he often spent time sitting in an armchair, reading magazines and trying to take a nap.
Goodnight
Normally, the process of falling asleep takes about 7 minutes. Studies have shown that a couple of hours in the morning in the sun can help you sleep in the evening. Useful in the fight against insomnia and the usual rituals: every evening you should go to bed at the same time, going through all the stages of the evening dress in order. Some psychologists argue that if you lie in the dark for a long time with your eyes wide open, sleep will come by itself, as in hypnosis, when a brilliant pendulum swings in front of the patient's gaze. The eyes get tired of following the monotonous movements, they close - and we fall asleep.
Babies have been rocked at all times and everywhere - and psychologists argue that gentle rocking can improve falling asleep, as well as singing mournful monotonous lullabies. Sleep specialists also suggest an easier method: if you can't sleep, get up and repeat the entire bedding ritual again. Once again. And more … But a glass of warm milk, contrary to popular belief, does not help to fall asleep - on the contrary, it excites the brain due to the protein it contains.
Anna KIRYANOVA, psychologist